I know that a few people on here have been looking forward to Champions Online. Well, I got into the beta (there might actually still be some keys available), and after the nightmare experience I had with fileplanet, I managed to actually get into the game. I never played City of Heroes, which was made by the same developers and was also a superhero MMO.
 
Even though my computer is not a gaming computer at all, by any stretch of imagination, I can say that Champions is playable on it. It's a little choppy, and it looks sort of ugly (though the cel-shading is pretty awesome), but it works.
 
The character creator seems limited at first, as it's sort of clumsy to get around, but once you know how to explore it's nooks and crannies, it opens up....a lot. I could choose my hero's leg and feetwear, his gloves, his arm and shoulder excessories, his type of mask (full face, half-face, eyes only, etc.), his texture type for clothing, his face, hair, eyes, mood, and more. In the end, I ended up making his look a lot like Invincible.....same type of costume, except without the goggles and with some leg and arm armor. I gave him a emblem for his chest and called him "World Warrior" (I was looking around my room for name inspiration and saw Street Fighter 2: The World Warriors by my SNES). He was a nuclear safety inspector giving crazy powers when the plant he worked at exploded.......half of the origin inspired by The Simpsons, haha. You can choose what type of power set you want, or you can mix and match. I made my character have super-strength and energy blasts, and gave him the Hero stat type, which is a "jack-of-all-trades" situation.
 
After that, it took me a little while to get into the groove with the game. You start out in a tutorial zone in Millenium City, which is being invaded by an alien race called the Qulaar. There are a bunch of side missions that you can do (and I did), and after that you can do the quests that get you out of the tutorial zone. Unlike a lot of other MMOs, there are no turns in combat. You have two moves to start with-your standard attack that takes up no Endurace (MP), that also regains MP when you attack with it, and your secondary, more powerful charge attack, which does take up MP. World Warrior's standard attack was a rapid fire barrage of punches for up-close and personal combat and a long range energy blast that does a ton of damage, and sends enemies flying (sometimes). Combat is fast and easy to work with, even with my choppy gameplay. It gets very hard though, if you get ganged up on-my character could take standard attack drones pretty well up to groups of three, but if they exceeded that and went into the four or five range I would die unless someone pitched in.
 
Also of note is that the general community's characters all seem pretty neat. There were a few guys trying to be funny running around (one of the names I spotted was "The Homosexual Agenda"), and a few copycats (I saw Iron Man!), but most of them are original characters that don't look hideous. I saw a animal, Battle Beast type character who liked like a were-tiger with gladiator armor on (lot cooler than it sounds), a Deadpool-esque mercenary like fella running around with guns and dual swords, a damn near Gundam mech, and a few others. I thought that you could be a villain if you wanted to, but it looks like I was mistaken. Probably in the full release.
 
Even though there's a ton of people running around, not a lot of them seem to be really playing with eachother....just going about their own business. Me and a French player named Dita were helping eachother out a bit with our enemies but that was about the extent of teamwork that I saw.
 
After the final tutorial level (in which you team up with the game's version of Superman/Captain America, the Defender), you can choose to go to the Desert or Canada and stop some ice demons. I couldn't say no to defending my homeland and chose Canada. Currently, I'm residing in the Powerhouse, a location for training and upgrading your heroes-I have a new offensive power, and now my dude can fly, too! Right now, I'm at Level 5.
 
That's the extent of my experience with the Champions Beta so far. I'll try and post more. Is anyone else on Comicvine in the beta? I know a pretty fair amount of users over at Giantbomb are in, but I haven't seen any talk about the beta here yet. If you are, let's try and meet-up and kick some supernatural ass! ;)